HTC One Me Dual Sim Review : More Mediatek

HTC has had a tough year, tough decisions and a lot of devices. The company has had the slowest quarter yet and the stock prices have dropped to an all time low. The company also reported a net loss of $258 Million, which points to the fact that the company is not doing well.

However that has not stopped HTC from making new handsets, and in countries like India, the HTC market share is growing considerably.

The HTC One ME, adds fuel to the HTC fire in India, a handset that brings the best of the flagship world at a relatively lower cost.

Overview

The HTC One ME is a good mix of things from HTC. Priced at Rs. 40000 or US $ 630 (outright) the phone makes a lot of sense to people. However the use of mediate is slightly bothersome to the tech crowd, especially at such high prices.

Hardware

The HTC One ME has almost everything from the HTC One M9+ including most of the hardware. What differs is the chipset. The One ME uses the new MediaTek Helio X10 and is also the first phone with the said chipset. This enables devices to utilise full octal-cores at 2.2 GHz in 64 bit and also shoots high quality videos at upto 480 frames/sec. It allows a 120 Hz video display rate too.

Apart from that you will get 3 GB of RAM, a brilliant 2k display with 5.2 inch size, a 2560×1440 px resolution and 565 ppi.

The same camera as the One M9, a 20 MP f2.2 lens equipped sensor, and an HTC ultra pixel sensor for the front.

Specifications

HTC One ME

Display

5.2-inch Super LCD3

Resolution

WQHD 1440×2560 pixels : 565 ppi pixel density

Chipset

MediaTek Helio X10

Processor

Octa-Cora 2.2 GHz

GPU

PowerVR G6200

RAM

3 GB

Storage

32 GB

MicroSD Support

Yes, Upto 2TB

Rear Camera

20MP, f2.2, BSI Sensor, 4K Video Recording

Front Camera

HTC Ultrapixel, f2.0

Battery

2,840mAh

Operating System

Android Lollipop 5.0.2 with HTC Sense 7.0

Misc

Boom Sound Speakers / Fingerprint Scanner

Price

Rs. 40,500

Display, Multimedia and Camera

The display on the new ME is the same as the M9+, excellent colours, deep blacks and great outdoor visibility. The touch is highly sensitive and even works when there is water on the display or if your fingers are wet. You will also get features like double tap to turn on. The display is great for all sorts of usage like watching movies, playing games or even browsing the internet. The high resolution makes content optimized for this look, great and the strain on the eyes is reduced considerably.

Boomsound speakers have always had this ability to be better than the remaining devices in the price segment and that continues with the new One ME. Sound is excellent in the headphones, out speakers or via bluetooth. Volumes are kept high and bass levels deep, almost as if the profile is the same as the old ones when HTC handsets would ship with “Beats Audio,” however, only better.

The camera lens and sensor are relatively large, hence a lot of light passes through to get a really high detail image. The images have excellent contrast and sharpness, shallow depth of field on close ups and a large zoom ratio thanks to the large 20.1 MP size of the rear camera.

4k video can be captured in 5 minute bursts, which gets annoying for those looking for a seamless solution. There are alternatives, devices which do not have said limits including the one we chose for our project here. Video is jitter free and captured at 30fps and it looks good, as the colour is deep and light is aptly adjusted.

Camera App

The Camera App is in-depth and features a lot of the capabilities of HTC devices seen in the past, galleries and Zoe are now independent apps with independent cloud storages. This complicates things for first time users, but in the longer run, makes sense. You also get the usual filters and effects along with post capture edits, which were all a part of HTC’s Sense.

Rear Camera Bokeh Effect

Rear Camera Indoor

Wide Front Camera

Front Ultrapixel Camera

Performance and Gaming

The handset scores roughly 46-48k on Antutu 64 Bit benchmark, which is impressive taking into consideration, the price. However, most of the performance which may not appear on benchmarks can been seen in real time usage.

The handset will almost never lag. In the 2 weeks of usage, the handset has not slowed down and transitions remain smooth, despite consuming large parts of the storage and or RAM.

Gaming remains impressive, the 120 Hz refresh rate of the display helps tremendously. Boom sound adds to the experience and so does the impressive touch screen. The good thing is that the device does not heat up despite increased usage, or high periods of gaming.

Phone Networks and Battery

The HTC One ME accepts dual LTE sim cards, both of which need to be nano sim cards. Network strength is great and so is the audio on both sides. Both sim cards can run LTE data packs and can be switched, depending on your convenience or usage scenarios.

Battery life was impressive due to high levels of optimizations and range point locks. Despite several rumours of poor battery life, we did not face any such issues with the handset. On our handset, the battery life was rather impressive. We got an average of One day plus use. Another thing to brag about is the quick charge capability of the handset. The One ME reaches a full charge in just over an hour, 50% recharge can be achieved in about 15 minutes of time.

Type of Usage

Battery Life Expectancy

Phone Calls

5 Hours

Standby

3 Days

Gaming

3.5 Hours

Music Playback

11 Hours

Internet

7.5 Hours

Fingerprint, Blinkfeed and New Sense 7

The new style fingerprint scanner utilised by HTC is better by leaps and bounds. Versus the previous ten scanners, which required you to slide your finger across, the new “Apple Touch ID” style scanners are efficient and very usable. This makes your phone private and safe. You can easily unlock your device in the presence of others, without revealing your passwords or unlock patterns.

Fingerprint Sensor

The new Blinkfeed is far more seamless and smooth. The UI is easy and very pleasing to the eye, HTC has improved the layout of the content and things like fonts and colours have been tweaked to appear easy to the eye. You can now simplify content and chose what feeds you want, within your Blinkfeed. You can also set up custom channels for the same, to allow you to reach directly to your favourite feeds.

Sense 7 is a mega improvement over previous Sense UIs, more because of the way pure android is available to the consumer. The UI is far more simplified and streamlined, less invasive and does not come loaded with bloatware. Essentials like the “Zoe” feature and the “One Gallery” are cloud-only apps that serve a simple purpose.

Customisation has been HTC’s forté and it remains so, in the new Sense 7 on the new HTC One ME. The UI is extensively modifiable, and if you don’t like the BlinkFeed on the left you can simply use a third party launcher and replace it all.

Conclusion

HTC may not have gotten a lot of things right this year, but their devices in the Indian market show that the company has chosen the right things at the right time.

The HTC One ME is one such example. With Snapdragon not performing well on their current lineup of chipsets, HTC went with MediaTek and their latest “premium” chipsets. This has made the devices a lot more stable. However, this has also made one handset considerably vary from another. Some report of lag and battery drain while others, like us, appreciate the long battery life on our handset.

MediaTek aside, the HTC One ME is the plastic equivalent of the all round phone. The impressive display, great camera, excellent battery and seamless performance on our handset, makes us want to like it a lot. Just like any other scenario alternates do exist and with the S6 becoming cheap, a fixed storage and single sim is something that may make you pick the HTC One ME with its Dual Sim and 2TB expandability. However the S6 performs better and looks damn good.

This phone is really a great investment for a person who is looking for good sound quality and good camera..... one thing I did not like about this phone was when I started to play high definition games for example Asphalt and Real Racing 3 the HTC One me became very hard to control especially when dropping down the notification slide it showed some of the worst lagging problems that I have ever came upon......another thing that I have noticed after I bought this phone is that they have not been any system updates for the betterment of this phone which makes me wonder if Htc has ditched this phone in pursuit of the new upcoming models.... I also noticed that this phone does not have quick charging facilities which makes one wonder is this phone is really worth the amount Htc is asking for

Pros- Best phone till now it's better than iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 best thing is dual sim 4G which most of the high end devices don't have the performance is the best no issue with mediatek helio X10 no heating issue battery life is excellent display is the best display I have ever scene Camera is great perfect in low light conditions selfies are great can capurte photo in dark good shutter speed also great finger print scanner